Chancellor George Osborne has hailed Captain Mainwaring as a role model for today's bank managers. He said the bumbling Dad's Army character was at the centre of his community and knew all of his small business customers. Asked about Lloyds Bank's recent decision to axe half of its small business advisers, with the loss of 1,000 jobs, Mr Osborne said banks should be focusing on building closer relationships with their customers. He singled out two relatively new banks to the UK - Handelsbanken and Metro Bank - as leading the way. Handelsbanken is Sweden's biggest bank and now has 170 branches in the UK. It specialises in "traditional" banking, with customers having a more active relationship with their bank manager. Osborne said of Captain Mainwaring: "the bank manager was at the very centre of local life, knew all the businesses, knew the people who ran the businesses and was empowered to make judgements about who had a good idea, who maybe had had a couple of failures in the past - but that wasn't their fault - and had a good idea going forward.”

By September 2009 the £1.5tn bank bailout total included: £289bn recapitalising and nationalising banks, £200bn cash support to prevent the banks running out of money, £400bn purchase of assets and lending by the treasury, £650bn government guarantees to the banks against losses.